


The “H.M.S. Celerity” Incident (1896)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [158]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Conspiracy, Dean in Panties, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Gay Sex, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Technology, The Royal Navy, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 19:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11470641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: A little technology is a dangerous thing, and where there is a high-level foul-up, there is bound to be a high-level cover-up – at least, until Sherlock gets involved.





	The “H.M.S. Celerity” Incident (1896)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [princessgolux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessgolux/gifts).



> Mentioned elsewhere as 'the cutter Alicia, which sailed into a patch of mist and vanished.'

This was another amongst our batch of far too many cases when those with power and authority abused the same in order to cover up a failing on their part - said failing being the killing of three innocent men. It was not included in the expanded (1921) 'Elementary' because of certain matters concerning its 'resolution', but a recent book by a grandson of the blundering oaf responsible, in which his ancestor was made out to be some sort of national hero, has sufficiently irked me to remedy that omission.

And because my publishers insist on it, I shall inform the very small number of my readers who might not know that 'celerity' is another word for speed, from Latin _celer_ as in 'accelerate'. I am sure that the vast majority of _my_ readers, who are learned enough to select my books amongst their reading matter, are more than smart enough to know that.

+~+~+

I must first recall a small but embarrassing incident that occurred just before the case started – not because I particularly wish to, but because 'someone' insisted, and it would be a cold day in Hell before I was ever able to say no to those pleading blue eyes. As has been more than amply demonstrated, my own detective abilities were few and far between. Unfortunately in this instance, far from not helping, they made me think the worst when I should not have done.

I had called into the jeweller's in Baker Street merely to avoid a passing shower, when Mr Abrahams came out the back.

“Ah, Doctor Watson”, he said. “Would you like to collect Mr. Holmes' locket whilst you are here? I have just finished repairing the chain.”

I think that I managed to mask my surprise quite well. Lockets in those far-off days were worn primarily by those in love, usually with a small picture of their love inside. Yet I had never given Sherlock any such picture.

“Of course”, I smiled, rallying to cover my surprise. “It will save him a trip.”

+~+~+

There was no sign of The Incredible Scruff who, I presumed, had gone out somewhere as his bedroom door was open. I placed the locket on his writing-desk and stared at it, not at all curious as to what was inside. And not at all tempted to flip open the simple clasp and find out.

I was not at all tempted for seventeen minutes until I just happened to wander over to it, pick it up and....

“John?”

I remained calm and collected, and turned to smile at the great detective emerging from my room who....

_He is tutting at me, isn't he?_

All right. I let out a _manly_ expression of surprise and....

 _I can_ hear _that eye-roll!_

I shrieked like a schoolgirl caught doing something wrong and span round to face him, my face flushed. Nothing could be worse than this.

Except that Sherlock himself looked guilty.

“Oh”, he said. “You found it.”

“What.... who.... why....?”

No man should have been able to talk in a voice at that high a pitch.

“Open it”, he said quietly.

I did not want to, but I had no choice. Inside was a single lock of hair, preserved behind a glass insert. Short, sandy-blond hair not unlike my own.

“It is yours”, he said, looking as embarrassed as I felt. “That last night in Lawrence, I.... I cut it from you before I left for my 'appointment' with Moriarty. I wanted to have a piece of you always next to my heart, in case the worst happened.”

I did not know who was more mortified by my discovery, him or me.

“Sex?” he suggested.

“Oh yes!” I said fervently.

+~+~+

Two weeks later, I too had a locket.

+~+~+

Generally speaking, the fairer sex had one of two reactions when meeting Sherlock for the first time. The most common, regrettably, was to simper at him, regardless of the woman's age or even marital status (and on more than one occasion, with their husband standing right there next to them!). Worse, some horrible person would always smirk when I coughed pointedly, although he would always make it up to me later... ahem! Less common was the reaction of the likes of our estimable landlady Mrs. Singer, who wanted to mother the fellow (he allowed that, provided it included copious amounts of bacon and coffee). 

Today, I had for the first time ever seen a different type of response on a doorstep of a small cottage just outside the town of Selsey, West Sussex, when a lady had opened the door to us, taken Sherlock's card, looked at it, looked at him – and promptly fainted!

+~+~+

Mrs. Edna Berry – for that was the lady's name – eventually came to with the help of some smelling salts that I had in my bag, although she still seemed incredulous that we were there.

“Bert said you must get _thousands_ of letters”, she said, still looking at us incredulously. “Waste of a stamp writing you, he said. But poor Gertie, she's so upset by it all, and I thought, why not?”

“Your letter was sufficiently intriguing for the doctor and myself to travel nearly one hundred miles though an indifferent English March day”, Sherlock smiled. “Pray compose your thoughts, start at the beginning, and tell us all. I believe that you are concerned over the disappearance of a boat?”

She nodded (at least she was not simpering) and began her tale.

“My sister Gertrude, she married a fisherman from West Wittering, a small place up the coast”, she began. “I'm sure it's hardly less dangerous than my Bert working in the naval docks every day, but it seems to have done for Fred, her husband.”

 _Seems_ to have, I wondered. Was there any doubt? Sherlock just smiled at the lady, and that seemed to calm her a little. I had a bad feeling that she would soon be defaulting to Standard Simpering.

“Fred was asked to help out with repairs to a cutter that was owned by a Hayling fellow”, she said. “The money was good, and they could get cover for the boat he was on, so he said yes. All I know is the name of the boat, the “Alicia”. A small thing, so Fred told Gert, used solely for pleasure. Nice if you've got time and money for that sort of thing, I s'pose.”

“I don't know the whys and wherefores of what happened next, but the chap who had ordered the repairs was iffy about paying once they were all done”, she went on. “Proper High Church gentleman, very snooty and right up himself, Bert said. So Fred and the boys had a bit of fun at his expense. The boat had one of those figureheads on the front, and he and the guys carved some, uh, rude words on it.”

I bit back a chuckle. Sherlock, however, was frowning.

“Before he finally paid up, they had to take the boat out one last time and make sure she was sea-worthy”, the lady continued. “That was three weeks ago today. She sailed into a patch of mist and was never seen again.”

“How do you know the detail about the mist?” Sherlock asked.

“They passed Fred's brother, Bill, out in his trawler”, she explained. “He told me he was sure that was the same boat; he'd seen it being repaired. He couldn't make out the name on it of course, but he was sure he could make out that figurehead. Bright blue with fair hair, he said.”

Sherlock was still frowning. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this case.

“But that's not the strangest thing, sirs”, he said earnestly. “I told you about that figurehead. Well, it turned up again – and you'll never guess where!”

“Your husband's workplace”, Sherlock said calmly.

She stared at him in astonishment.

“That's... that's amazing!” she said. “Yes, there's this place where they throw old wood and other stuff they don't want. Bert found it there, and he thought some of the wood around it came from the boat as well. Then one of the dockyard managers started yelling at him for some reason. He didn't know why; they've never had a problem with the guys taking stuff from there before.”

Sherlock was looking even more worried now.

“I have an important question”, he said. “Did your husband check to see if this figurehead was there subsequently?”

She nodded.

“When he slipped back the next day, it was gone", she said. "And all the wood with it. But Fred remembered seeing at least one message on it that he knew the chaps had written. It had to be the same one - but how did it get all the way to Pompey?”

Sherlock folded his arms and thought.

“Mrs. Berry”, he said at last, “I responded to your letter not just because it was intriguing, but because I could see one possible explanation of the facts that, most regrettably, what you have told me today only serves to confirm. Now, I notice that your cottage is set a little apart from the town, which is good. I need you to do something for me.”

“Sir?”

“It may be that there is a perfectly innocent explanation for what has befallen your brother-in-law”, Sherlock said. “But then again, it may be something more sinister, and I rather dear that that is indeed the case. If it is, then it is only fair I tell you now that you, and those close to you, may be in some considerable danger.”

The woman opened her mouth, but could not speak. She was clearly very frightened.

“I would not alarm you without good reason”, Sherlock said, “but I know the way that these things work. It is vitally important that you say _nothing_ about our visit today, not even to your sister, and that your husband, although he of course must be told, does not relay that information to anyone. You must impress that on him _most_ forcibly. The doctor and I will make sure to visit the post office and state that we are investigating a matter elsewhere on the peninsula.”

“You're scaring me!” she managed.

“I will have to solve this case quickly”, Sherlock said. “Fortunately, I think that that will be possible. I will return as soon as I can, hopefully with better news or at least more comfort. Apart from your brother, do you happen to know who else was out on the boat when it disappeared?”

“The Appletree brothers, Jack and Jim”, she said. “Both good men. Is there... do you think....?”

“I rather fear that they are all lost at sea”, Sherlock said gently. “In cases such as this, we must strive to first protect the living, and only then avenge the dead. I am sorry that I have brought you so little comfort, but I must be honest. We shall see you again shortly. In the meantime, keep silence – for your own safety!”

We bowed and left.

+~+~+

It was a long carriage ride back to Chichester Station, across the Manhood Peninsula. The area was thinly populated, although I had noted in the local paper we had purchased on our way down that even here there were plans for a railway, or at least a tramway, to run down to Selsey.

“This is serious, is it not?” I said after a while.

He nodded, but did not seem predisposed to talk. We had done as he had said we would, walking into Selsey and mentioning a local landowner as having called for Sherlock's services (I had actually caught the woman he had spoken to at the post office closing her counter so she could run out and start spreading such juicy gossip!). I wondered at the need for all this subterfuge, but knew my friend well enough by now to accept that whatever he did, he did for a reason.

At the station Sherlock purchased two tickets on to Portsmouth, and we found a comfortable first-class apartment into which we settled.

“It is deadly serious”, he said grimly. “Poor Mrs. Berry is in considerable danger, and if it were to emerge that she had called me in on the matter, even my life might be in peril.”

I stared at him in shock.

“Not another government cover-up!” I exclaimed, fearing the worst. We had not long gotten over the shocking case concerning the loss of the _“Friesland”_. He shook his head.

“Worse”, he said. “It is to our great advantage that the person we are going to see owes me a small favour for a private matter that I resolved for him some years back, but whether he will consider this too great a repayment – well, we shall see. I would rather that than the alternative.”

He would say nothing else, and seemed sunk into a depression of his own, And that worried me still further.

+~+~+

We travelled through Portsmouth and alighted at the Harbour station, from whence we walked the short distance to the Royal Navy dockyards. Sherlock presented his card at the gate, and asked to see the gentleman whose name was written on it. I wondered if this request would be refused, but a few minutes later the reply came back to admit us, and a very short time after that we were shown into the offices of the Lord High Admiral.

Mr. Richard James Meade, better known as the Earl of Clanwilliam, was a tall grey-haired gentleman in his sixties, and quite evidently wary of us from the start. Sherlock had told me not to take any notes in the meeting, which I considered yet another bad sign.

“Mr. Holmes, Doctor Watson”, he said with a polite smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sherlock sat down, and I followed him.

“I am afraid that is far from 'pleasure' that brings me here this fine day”, Sherlock said heavily. “It is about the killing of three innocent men.”

There. A slight but definite twitch on the admiral's face.

“A killing?” he said. “That is serious indeed. How did it happen, pray?”

Sherlock sat back.

“The doctor read to me, some time last year, about a new super-fast boat that some private entrepreneur was building at Newcastle-on-Tyne”, he said. “It achieves its great speed through the use of some method called turbines, but as I was otherwise occupied, I did not pay it the attention that it doubtless merited.”

I blushed. I remembered just where my friend's focus had been whilst I had been trying to read him that article. The admiral watched Sherlock warily.

“However”, my friend said, and his tone was suddenly sharper, “what I lack in attentiveness, I make up for in understanding of the human psyche. The greatest navy in the world would not be inclined to accept some upstart jackanapes coming out with an invention that they had not. There have been plenty of instances of governments and large organizations using – abusing – their positions of power to seize the efforts of lesser men, or copy them and then claim the credit for themselves. This, I believe, is what was intentioned here.”

The admiral's smile was now notably strained. 

“The Royal Navy, to its eternal discredit, covertly developed a rival to this “Turbinia”, their own turbine-driven craft which was fully intending to steal the ideas of our entrepreneur. If the speeds claimed for this method of propulsion are to be believed, then the first navy in the world to implement it in all their ships would enjoy a sizeable advantage over their enemies for some years to come. And I would suppose that, like all such technologies, it can only be improved, so that advantage may well be retained for quite some time.”

“That is an interesting speculation, sir”, the admiral said. “Have you any facts to back it up?”

Sherlock smiled dangerously.

“As you say, sir, pure speculation”, he said. “But I have several acquaintances in the journalistic profession, and some of them are definitely of the sort who would quite happily poke around the dockyards – and its many workers - until they found evidence of this ship.” He hesitated before adding, “I meant to say, this _speculative_ ship. If it exists.”

“That, sir, would be an act of treachery to this great nation”, the admiral said forcibly.

“Evidently, sir, you have not read the works of the good doctor here”, Sherlock replied tartly. “Justice before everything is my creed, and 'everything' includes patriotism. I love my country and the British Empitr, but I will not stand aside and see innocent men killed because some idiot of a captain drove the Royal Navy's fastest ship through the middle of their cutter. And, to his utter shame, then left the men to drown in an attempt to cover up his foul deed!”

I stared at him in shock. There was a long silence.

“What do you plan to do?” the admiral asked. 

“As I said, my friends are quite capable of finding this craft, or the people who have worked on it, and blowing this story across the front pages of the country's newspapers”, Sherlock said. “If you wish to stop that, I will require you to do three things, and to leave here today with a written assurance that you will carry them out within the month. Otherwise, I will act.”

“This ship, if it exists, could easily be dismantled in such a time”, the admiral said. Sherlock looked sharply at him.

“I am not one to bandy threats around”, he said coldly, “but if the Royal Navy thinks that the new German Kaiser is a problem, then they will find that _my_ displeasure is infinitely worse. Be assured, sir, that the top ranks in your organization would find every skeleton in their cupboards aired in the popular press, one scandal at a time. Starting with a certain rear-admiral and his three wives!”

I really wished that I had been allowed to take notes, as the admiral went deathly pale at that moment.

“Say on”, he said quickly. 

“First, I require a written promise that no action will be taken against Mr. Albert Berry, his family and friends”, Sherlock said. “As I am sure you would have been capable of divining, it was they who called me in, to solve the riddle of the disappearance of Mrs. Berry's brother-in-law and two men from his village, left to drown by one of your commanders.”

“That seems reasonable”, the admiral said. “Next?”

“My next demand will be more expensive for you”, Sherlock said. “The Appletree and Featherstone families are of course hit by the loss of their men. Fortuitously an anonymous and rich Sussex philanthropist died recently, and his curious will stated that his considerable estate was to be realized and the cash then divided amongst the victims of the next accident off the Sussex coast. I have a feeling – and I am sure that I am right in that feeling – that he was very, _very_ rich.”

“He undoubtedly was”, the admiral agreed. “And finally?”

“This demand will cost you less, but will be inconvenient for you”, Sherlock said. “Not that that concerns me in the slightest. The commander responsible for the sinking will leave the Royal Navy. Much as I would prefer him to be fired in disgrace, and indeed left to the same watery fate to which he abandoned those poor men, I appreciate that such an action would be difficult for you, so I shall allow you to offer him the option of resigning, little though he deserves such consideration. However, if he is still here a month from now....”

“I could of course fire anyone”, the admiral pointed out, “and you would never know.”

Sherlock smiled dangerously.

“Do you really think”, he said silkily, “that I would not know about any such subterfuge? I shall check, just as I shall be receiving regular letters from Mrs. Berry in future. You are, I know, a man of honour, and you will adhere to this deal. And not just because you know that I too am a man of honour, and that my wrath is not to be incurred without severe penalty. And after the thrice-married rear-admiral, I might tell you that my next target will be a certain high-ranking naval officer to whom you yourself are related. And whose sexual pecadilloes make the three wives look positively conservative!”

The look on my friend's face was, I would admit, frightening. Not for the first or the last time, I was silently grateful that he was on the side of justice.

+~+~+

Once we were ensconced in our first-class apartment at the station, Sherlock seemed to slump in his seat. I moved across and pulled him into an embrace, and he sighed.

“This is the downside of my work”, he said, sniffing mournfully. “The likes of the Royal Navy are as powerful as any government, more so if anything, and what I extracted from the earl was probably the best that I could have got. But I still feel as if I have failed those three men.”

“You have done as much as you could”, I told him, pulling him closer. “Are you sure that he will keep his word?”

“He knows me well enough that I will not stop in this matter until he does”, Sherlock said. “We must repair to Mrs. Berry to re-assure her that all is about as well as it could be, and that she is safe. We shall be late home tonight.”

“Why do we not stay at the hotel in Selsey?” I asked. “We could wire Mrs. Singer that we shall be delayed, and besides....”

He looked curiously at me.

“Besides what?” he asked.

“I always wanted to have sex in the Manhood!” I grinned.

The bastard punched me for that! But it was worth it to see him smile.

+~+~+

I suppose that I should have known Sherlock might come prepared. But I still stared at the item he was holding up with a mixture of horror and fascination. He obviously misinterpreted my reaction, and himself blushed.

“If it is too much....” he began.

“No!” I said, a little too forcibly. “It is just..... well.... it is green!”

Possibly one of the dumbest things I had ever said (yes, I know; lots of competition, shut up!), as I stared at the garment. It was a pair of silken ladies' panties in the finest lace – except they were very clearly my size, and almost transparent. I groaned at the sight.

“Oh not now!” he grinned.

What?

“Now I just want to have sex with you”, he grinned. “Sustained periods of sexual gratification during which I intend to make you achieve orgasmic release as often as possible.”

Words. I was sure I remembered how to form them. Some time back.

“And then tomorrow”, he grinned wickedly, “we are going on a long carriage ride back to Chichester, followed by an even longer train ride all the way to Victoria Station, and finally a cab ride to Baker Street.”

Oh he would not be so cruel!

+~+~+

Apparently he would. I had to wear the things for the whole damn journey, and he made it infinitely worse by teasing me all the way there! Mrs. Singer had openly laughed at me as I had virtually sprinted up the stairs, and some blue-eyed bastard of a lover took far too long to join me, for which I took great pleasure in making him pay!

+~+~+

Postscriptum: There were rumours in the papers for some time afterwards that the Royal Navy had tried out an experimental turbine-driven boat – called “H.M.S. Celerity”, it was speculated – but it would be ten years before an efficient turbine came into military use, on the famous _“H.M.S. Dreadnought”_ in 1906. Sherlock told me that a Captain Damon McBride had resigned from the Navy the same day we had returned to London, but that he would continue to monitor the fellow, to make sure that he did not try to slip back in again. Fortunately for both him and the Royal Navy, he did not.

Sherlock also told me the details of those 'pecadilloes' of the admiral's relation. Safe to say that I would never look at a tennis-racket the same way!

+~+~+

Our third case that memorable year of 'Eighty-Six was difficult for Sherlock on a personal level, but the aftermath was infinitely worse.


End file.
